Kenneth M. Frith is moving away from Windows XP (as he should). But he still has some old DOS programs he’s either unwilling or unable to give up. Can they run in Windows 8?

The big question is: Does your new PC run the 32- or 64-bit version of Windows 7 or 8? If you have the 32-bit version (referred to as x86 for historical reasons), you should have no trouble with many (but not all) DOS programs. But if you’re using the 64-bit version (x64), running a DOS program is officially impossible.

Richard O'Hara backs up regularly to an external hard drive, but that leaves him worried. “How can I make the data on the external drive secure in case it's lost or stolen?”

Back up and encrypt. Those are vital habits for everyone in our digital society. Without a backup, each and every document, spreadsheet, photo and video on your hard drive could disappear in seconds. And without encryption, your sensitive files could fall into the wrong hands, resulting in identity theft and other disasters.

In short, you need to back up all of your files. You also need to encrypt the ones containing sensitive information. And the encrypted files need to remain encrypted in the backup.

For years, Jocelyn Warfield saved her document files to the desktop. She asked me about continuing the process.

As far back as I can remember, no version of Windows has ever, by default, saved data files (documents, spreadsheets, photos, and so on) to the desktop. And at least since XP, it has not been a particularly safe place to save them.

But, because the desktop is always visible, some people just can’t resist temptation.

Every legal copy of Windows has its own activation key, also called a product key or a product identification (PID). It’s made up of five groups of five characters each, and it’s unique to your copy of Windows. Basically, it’s a proof of purchase. You can download and install Windows for free, but without a unique activation key issued by Microsoft and not in use on another computer, it won’t work for long.

Jerseygirlinfl asked the Answer Line forum if photos floating around the Internet could contain mailware.

Cybercriminals use images in a number of ways to infect your computer. In most cases, the photo itself is harmless; it's just a trick to get you to do something stupid. But sometimes, a .jpg file itself will contain malicious code.

Let's look at a few ways in which an image can contain some real bad news.